It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
The Gulf states are some of the world's most prolific exporters of raw sulfur, the core ingredient for sulfuric acid, the world's most-produced industrial chemical. The region's energy industry enables the trade by putting out an abundance of raw sulfur: when sulfurous Mideast gas and oil are processed, large quantities of the substance are dumped out as a byproduct, then loaded onto bulkers and shipped to industrial end-users. But there is a hitch, according to maritime consultancy Brookes Bell - the Hormuz crisis has delayed many of those bulkers well past the safe time limit for storing sulfur in a steel hold, exposing ships to risk of severe and rapid corrosion.
The consultancy's head of non-destructive testing, Arron Jackaman, is encouraging shipowners and insurers to begin looking closely at any bulkers that have been stuck in the hot, humid Gulf with a load of sulfur for the past two months. The sooner the inspection process begins, he says, the lower the likelihood of damage and high costs for repairs - which often require cropping and replacement of the hold's plating.
The process of safely shipping sulfur usually begins with a limewash coating. The hold is cleaned of any prior cargo's residues, then a fresh barrier coating of lime wash is applied to the hold's surfaces. The lime counteracts the natural formation of sulfuric acid from raw sulfur, slowing down - but not stopping - the process of corrosion. But the wash isn't effective forever: it is generally considered acceptable for up to 20 days, after which accelerated corrosion begins. Moisture and sulfur mixed together lead to the inevitable formation of an acidic environment, turning steel into iron sulfide in rapid progression - swiftly causing heavy pitting in local areas. The rate of attack is far faster than ordinary saltwater corrosion, and far more aggressive; entire ships have been declared a total loss due to sulfur-driven corrosion in the past, according to vendor RBM.
Some of the vessels stuck in the Gulf because of the Hormuz crisis have been there for three times as long as the rated protective time of a limewash application. "That protection has long since been exhausted," says Jackaman. His firm has found pitting of up to a quarter of an inch deep in as little as 50 days - enough wastage to blow through the sacrificial corrosion allowance for tank top plating, bulkhead stools and sloping hopper plating under IACS' Common Structural Rules.
But the appearance of sulfur-driven pitting is often worse than the actual impact on the steel, Jackaman says, and visual assessment can be inaccurate.
"Localized pitting tends to concentrate at points where grab discharge equipment has broken the coating barrier, and on cargo hold tank top plating, which is left uncoated by design. Without correct measurements and quantitative assessment, there is a significant risk that steel within class limits is condemned unnecessarily," he says.
Iran Resumes Attacks on Merchant Shipping With Strike on LNG Carrier
Iran's military forces have once again opened fire on merchant shipping in the Strait of Hormuz in a renewed push to dominate control of the waterway's traffic, according to multiple maritime security sources.
The UKMTO has confirmed that one tanker was hit by an unknown projectile on Monday night at about 2100 hours UTC. The incident occurred east of the Musandam Peninsula, off the small port of Limah. However, the maritime security agency has not confirmed the vessel's name. Security consultancy Vanguard Tech reports that the attack caused a fire, which has since been put out.
Iranian state broadcaster IRIB confirmed one attack on one tanker, and said that it was attacked after "repeated warnings."
According to Martin Kelly of EOS Risk Group, the vessel was the laden LNG carrier Al Rekayyat (IMO 9397339). Bloomberg has confirmed this report with multiple shipping sources. LNG carrier attacks carry a risk of extreme fires if a munition breaches a cargo tank, a rare event that occurred earlier this year in the attack on the LNGC Arctic Metagaz.
Kelly suggested that a second attack occurred, targeting a ULCC in laden condition. He predicted that the U.S. would launch retaliatory strikes in response, as in past cycles of escalation.
"Iran is making another push to direct all Hormuz traffic to its shipping lanes, away from the Omani side," said Bloomberg commodity analyst Javier Blas in a social media post. "Part of its plan seems, too, allowing multiple Japanese ships to cross: yesterday six Japanese oil tankers crossed, and two more are crossing today."
Regime-aligned social media account Dolfiniran confirmed early Tuesday that Iran has intensified its campaign of military pressure to "monopolize passage through the Strait of Hormuz." The account reiterated Iran's interpretation of the recently-agreed White House ceasefire deal: from Tehran's perspective, the MOU requires Iran to facilitate free and unobstructed passage for shipping - but only through Iran's shipping lane, not the Omani lane.
"Iran's commitment is solely to opening the Strait of Hormuz by implementing Iranian arrangements, which are now being implemented, including the designation of the route. Iran will accept no form of compromise regarding the Strait of Hormuz," Dolfiniran suggested.
Shipping interests appear to be reacting to the renewed threat, at least based upon AIS-visible transit data. "The inbound tanker flows have slowed to a trickle and with the latest attack from IRGC using missiles (previously drones), the situation appears to be escalating," wrote contrarian investment outfit HFI Research. "From a flow standpoint, inbound tanker rate is insufficient to change the production shut-in math."
The new disruption comes just as tanker traffic through the strait was beginning to find its footing again. Over July 4-5, Windward counted nearly 80 transits in and out of the waterway - about two-thirds of pre-conflict volumes.
Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 / Flickr
It will soon be the 250th anniversary of this country and the Trump administration is already planning its own set of celebrations. In that context, let me be as straightforward as I can: amid his latest war (or do I mean peace?), there’s nothing strait about President Donald J. Trump, despite his recent bombing attacks around the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, his assault on Iran has been about as crooked as you can get, but all too sadly, not as crooked as Donald Trump and his pals (including, of course, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth) might still prove to be.
Let me start, though, by saying this: before he suddenly attacked Iran, more or less out of the blue, none of us would have had the faintest idea (including possibly him) that he might do so. And, of course, given the size and military power of the two countries, if you had paid no attention to American history since the Korean War began in 1950, you might (like “our” president) have imagined that, should he launch an attack on Iran, victory would be a given or at least a more than reasonable probability. As has indeed been true, however, since that war in Korea ended in a victoryless fashion in 1953, no such luck — not for the United States of America anyway — not even, I would bet, if he does convince Congress to increase the Pentagon budget to $1.5 trillion (yes, trillion!) a year.
And as for his full-scale air assault on Iran, as David Faris put it recently at the Nation magazine, it’s turned out to be “a long-overdue Waterloo for America’s decades-long project to topple the Iranian theocracy or force it to its knees.” A Waterloo indeed! And that, of course, makes Donald Trump the world’s strangest modern version of Napoleon Bonaparte. If only he could be exiled to the island of Elba (though, of course, that didn’t work out too well the last time, did it?) or, since I’m not picky, perhaps Long Island, not so far from the city where he was born.
And here’s the truly strange thing in the United States of America in 2026: none of us know what President Donald J. Trump will do two hours, no less two days, two weeks, or (yes, he’ll probably still be president!) two years from now — not even, I’m quite sure, him. And of course, there’s a simple enough reason for that. Donald Trump is a first-class mystery — even, undoubtedly, to himself. And so, while he and his crew have certainly issued militarized threats against both Cuba (”Make a deal before it’s too late”) and Greenland (“One way or another, we’re gonna get it”), that doesn’t faintly mean that those are the places he’s going to face off against and possibly attack next (as he did Iran).
Now, given his record the second time around, he’s not just a war president but PW or President War. And, of course, no one, including him, really knows what he might do next when it comes to this country’s war docket or just about anything else.
The other day, though, it crossed my mind that perhaps, if Iran doesn’t flare up too many times and manage to take the global economy down with it (proving to be a classic Trumpian version of that TV series of his childhood and mine, Victory — or, these days, of course, Defeat — at Sea), and he has a little time on his hands, maybe he might like to take us back to where it all began after September 11, 2001, and launch a new war against Afghanistan. I mean, why not change the subject, especially given how badly Iran has gone for him and the possibility of a war-induced global recession (among other things)?
And what could be a better change of subject than to return to the days after 9/11 by sending the U.S. military back into Afghanistan? I mean, honestly, what could possibly go wrong?
Now, of course, I admit that that’s a completely weird, off-the-wall prediction about our already all-too-strange Trumpian future, especially since, to give him full credit, he did begin the final American military withdrawal from Afghanistan before his first term in office ended (when he was, of course, a different Trump). But hey, why not? Or maybe he’ll just pull a Nicolás Maduro and try to kidnap Afghanistan’s Supreme Leader. (Wouldn’t having the two of them in the same jail cell in Brooklyn be cool?)
And by the way, let’s not forget that at any moment Donald Trump might also go back to war with Iran. Yes, it could certainly happen… or not, which is what you could say about almost anything having to do with him as president.
The thing about Donald Trump is you simply never know… and oh, while I was writing that sentence, I noticed this, in what then was the Guardian‘s latest piece of reporting on Iran: “Iranian negotiators have suspended high-stakes talks with the US in Switzerland in protest at a stream of threats issued by Donald Trump to bomb Iran, and even to kidnap the Iranian negotiating team unless the strait of Hormuz is reopened” or as the president of the United States so charmingly put it then, “You close it and you won’t have a country. You won’t even make it back to your fucking country.” (Of course, he’s also been threatening to blockade the Strait himself or to put all-American tolls on it. But that’s him for you. Nothing he ever says is the final word, not when Donald J. Trump is speaking.)
And give him credit for bluntness, too. Of course, by the time this piece actually comes out, all of the above will undoubtedly be ancient history and who knows where we’ll be, or rather where he’ll be taking us?
In short, on the 250th birthday of this country, he’s distinctly planning to give history new meaning. Think of it this way: When it comes to Donald J. Trump, there is nothing straight about the Strait of Hormuz or, for that matter, anything else and his crooked version of history and of the present moment, just couldn’t be weirder. Maybe — my final thought — sometime in the near future, he’ll launch an operation to kidnap himself. Really, when it comes to him, nothing is beyond the bounds of possibility, is it?
This article was originally published by Tom Englehardt; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.Email
Tom Engelhardt created and runs the website TomDispatch.com. He is also a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. A fellow of the Type Media Center, his sixth and latest book is A Nation Unmade by War.
President Trump was reportedly “shocked” to see many thousands of Iranians in the street mourning at the funeral of the country’s late leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over the weekend. Khamenei was assassinated by the United States at the beginning of the February US surprise attack on Iran.
The US attack on Iran was sold to Trump by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and US neocons as an easy “cake walk” that would lead the Iranian government to fall and be replaced with a US-friendly regime.
“I thought they hated him,” Trump said of the murdered religious leader of Iran.
Not only did the Iranian people not rise up to replace their leadership with one friendly to Washington, but the society seems to have become even more cohesive and patriotic. This should surprise no one, as when similar tragedies occurred in the United States – assassinations, 9/11, etc – we also as a society came closer together.
In Soccer when you kick the ball into your own goal, it is referred to as an “own-goal.” That is what President Trump achieved with his attack on Iran on February 28th. In fact, it was not just one “own-goal,” but a series of them. The blunder will likely go down in American history as one of the worst foreign policy moves in our history.
The Iranians did not rise up and declare support for the US. American military bases throughout the region are so severely damaged by Iranian retaliation that most cannot be brought back online. Scores of US military equipment has been destroyed or damaged at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. Countries in the region are rethinking their decision to essentially become protectorates of the United States now that it is demonstrated that they cannot be protected by the United States. American military power suddenly looks less powerful.
But perhaps the most destructive “own-goal” of the US attack is the Iranian decision to establish control over the Strait of Hormuz. Even in the US/Israeli attacks of last June, the Strait was kept open by Iran. It is a vital trade route and in everyone’s best interest to keep open for business.
The February attack and Iran’s strong regional response led the country to embrace what some have called a de facto nuclear weapon: control of the Strait. Explaining why he signed the memorandum of understanding with Iran last month, President Trump mentioned the damage being done to the US economy by the closure of the Strait and the possibility that matters may even get worse without the agreement. The US economy desperately needed the Strait to be open.
Now, however, progress toward peace with Iran continues to be thwarted by the stubborn insistence on the US side that the Strait of Hormuz must not be controlled by Iran and that a fee system for passage through the Strait cannot be instituted by Iran and Oman. Several skirmishes have already taken place in the area, threatening to take the US back to war.
It is in the best interest of the United States to abandon claims on Hormuz – which is thousands of miles away – and live with the consequences of Trump’s mistake. Another war cannot win what two previous wars have lost. Let Iran control the Strait and let international trade and commerce be re-established. Let’s leave the Strait alone!
Ron Paul is a former Republican congressman from Texas. He was the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president.
Friday, July 03, 2026
‘God commands us not to kill’: Faith leaders protest 50 years of executions
WASHINGTON (RNS) — On the anniversary of a Supreme Court ruling reinstating the US death penalty, faith leaders, those affected by murder and activists organize to call for an end to the death penalty. But religion has also been present in support for capital punishment.
Activists participate in an annual “Starvin’ for Justice” demonstration against the death penalty outside the Supreme Court, in Washington, Wednesday, July 1, 2026. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)
WASHINGTON (RNS) — In her first years attending a fast marking the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that resumed the modern-day death penalty in the United States, SueZann Bosler was still on medication to treat the effects of being stabbed in the head by the same man who murdered her father, the Rev. Bill Bosler, in 1986.
To honor the wishes of her father — a Church of the Brethren minister in Florida who was against the death penalty — Bosler worked for a decade to commute the death sentence of the man who killed her father and injured her, despite initially struggling to forgive him. “ It saved my life, forgiveness,” she said.
On Thursday (July 2), the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Gregg v. Georgia decision that reignited the modern era of the death penalty in the country, Bosler is on her fourth day of fasting. She has been taking shifts as part of the “Starvin’ for Justice” anti-capital punishment protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court to try to convince passersby to join her in opposition as temperatures climb above 100 degrees.
But the solidarity of about 85 protesters involved makes the time joyful, Bosler told RNS, because she’s often the sole person protesting outside the Florida Supreme Court.
In the 50 years since the Gregg decision, faith-based opposition to the death penalty has been a cornerstone of successful abolition and commutation campaigns — even as religious Americans as a whole tend to support the death penalty, data suggests.
“Faith leaders have been instrumental” in death penalty abolition in New Jersey, New Mexico, Connecticut, Virginia and several other states, according to Abraham Bonowitz, the executive director of Death Penalty Action and co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.
Abraham Bonowitz, of the group Death Penalty Action, leads a demonstration outside the Capitol in Montgomery, Ala., on Monday, June 8, 2026, to oppose an upcoming execution in Alabama. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)
Bonowitz also credited faith leaders like the Rev. Sharon Risher, whose family members were murdered at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, with successfully pressuring President Joe Biden to commute the sentences of 37 people on death row in the last days of his presidency. Emanuel’s shooter was not among those commutations.
“God commands us not to kill,” said Art Laffin, an organizer of the Starvin’ for Justice protest and member of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker community. “It’s not an option, it’s a command.”
Laffin, who has publicly prayed for the man who murdered his brother, Paul, said that on the cross Jesus was “given the death penalty of his day” but put “into practice the command to love your enemies” by asking God to forgive his killers. “The best way to honor my brother is to work for the prevention of violence,” he said. RELATED: Faith groups join other death penalty opponents in new campaign
Executions in the U.S. surged last year, largely driven by an increase in Florida, and religious death penalty abolitionists are feeling renewed energy and searching for any openings they can find to prevent executions.
The death sentence remains a legal punishment in 27 states. Of those, four states — California, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Ohio — have instated execution moratoriums in the last few years. In the 23 states where the death penalty remains, it continues to emerge as a topic of vociferous debate, especially amid criticism over botched executions.
Protesters against the death penalty gather in Terre Haute, Ind., July 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Currently, the federal death penalty applies to all 50 states but is rarely used. Since 1988, there have been 16 federal executions, 13 of which occurred in a six-month period between July 2020 and January 2021.
In Sacramento on Tuesday, faith leaders and activists delivered petitions from more than 25,000 people urging California Gov. Gavin Newsom to commute the sentences of all those on death row in the state, alongside 565 LED candles representing their lives.
Faith-based activists are also ramping up pressure on Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to commute sentences as his term ends this year. Bonowitz said DeWine sometimes attends Mass at the same Columbus parish as his wife, Bonowitz said. The church, St. Catherine, prays for the abolition of the death penalty at every Mass. A spokesperson for the Diocese of Columbus did not confirm or deny those prayers when reached by email.
Last month, DeWine, who had earlier in his career sponsored a bill to reinstate the death penalty in Ohio, called for state lawmakers to abolish the death penalty. Despite pressure, he has commuted only one of the state’s more than 100 death penalty sentences to life in prison without parole.
In Florida, Catholic bishops have written repeatedly to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is Catholic, asking him to stay the executions of 22 people in the last year. They recently urged DeSantis to prevent the execution of Dusty Ray Spencer, 74, who last week became the oldest person executed in Florida’s modern history. Faith-based activists have also elevated the voice of Ron McAndrew, a former Florida prison warden who says he is haunted by men he executed.
SueZann Bosler, center left, and Art Laffin, right, pose at a “Starvin’ for Justice” demonstration against the death penalty outside the Supreme Court, in Washington, Wednesday, July 1, 2026. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)
In the nation’s capital, the activists hope to mark the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision by appealing to passersby and the consciences of the justices inside, many of whom are Catholics and have issued decisions advancing the death penalty.
The Rev. Jack Sullivan, Jr., a Disciples of Christ pastor and the brother of a murder victim, Jennifer, told RNS the anniversary “confronts people of goodwill across the country, and particularly people of faith, who believe in the powers of hope and life and love and redemption.”
Like Bosler and Laffin, Sullivan is part of Journey of Hope, a national anti-death penalty organization led by family members of murder victims.
Among the advocates fasting are also those who minister to those on death row. Maureen Bibby, a Catholic from Tennessee, said she’s “become best friends” with the man she visits on death row.
On July 2, 1976, in a 7-to-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled capital punishment did not violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The decision was a dramatic reversal of the court’s 1972 ruling in Furman v. Georgia, which had halted executions nationwide.
Since Gregg v. Georgia, “1670 people made in God’s image and likeness have been executed,” Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, an anti-death penalty organization, said in a statement to RNS.
Vaillancourt Murphy added that more than 200 people on death row have been exonerated since 1973 — “a sobering reminder that our criminal legal system is fallible, and that the death penalty is irreversible.” Perjury, false accusations and official misconduct are the leading causes of wrongful convictions, the advocacy group Equal Justice Initiative has found.
In the history of capital punishment, Black Americans have been disproportionately sentenced to death, especially when the crime involves white victims. The majority of state executions since 1976 have occurred in the U.S. South. As a result, several scholars and activists have deemed capital punishment “a direct descendant of lynching” and racial oppression.
“The country has had and continues to have racism flowing in the groundwaters of our land,” Sullivan said, “and it certainly affects the criminal justice system and the handing down of sentences, including and especially death sentences.”
Religion has also been present in support for capital punishment. A 2021 Pew Research Center report found that a majority of religiously affiliated U.S. adults, especially Protestants, favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder — as do a majority of all Americans, per the survey.
Yet Bonowitz, who is Jewish, said those who base their support for the death penalty on Hebrew Scripture must look at rabbinic interpretations, which argue “the death penalty exists” but humans “cannot be trusted with this power to execute.”
Shane Claiborne, the author of “Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why It’s Killing Us,” told RNS, “The death penalty wouldn’t stand a chance in America without the support of Christians.”
Claiborne, co-founder of Christian social justice group Red Letter Christians and a key figure in the religious left, said he saw opportunities to work with conservatives on the issue. “There’s something deeper that should connect us, which is this profound sense that no one’s beyond redemption and that our government is not infallible, so we shouldn’t entrust it with this power,” he said.
Sister Helen Prejean, part of the congregation of St. Joseph and an anti-death penalty advocate, said in a recent video reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the Gregg decision, “I think it is the most terrible decision the Supreme Court has made after Dred Scott,” which ruled enslaved people were not U.S. citizens.
Prejean is known globally for her decades-long crusade against capital punishment. Her campaign has included making personal appeals to both Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis.
Francis ordered a change to the catechism of the Catholic Church in 2018, which positioned capital punishment as “inadmissible” and “an attack on the inviolability and dignity” of people.
Sullivan, the Disciples of Christ pastor, also acknowledged that central biblical figures such as Moses, David and Saul “committed murder” but “were transformed by the power of God” and became pillars of the Chrisitan faith. “How do we know that on death row, there isn’t another Moses or Esther or David, or Mary or Saul?” he asked.
The 50th anniversary of Gregg falls just days before America celebrates its 250th birthday. For Sullivan, the close proximity of the two milestones gives the nation the opportunity to reflect.
“I expect the state to rise above homicide,” Sullivan said. “I expect the state to adopt non-lethal methods of holding people accountable.”
Saturday, June 27, 2026
Unhinged Trump Calls US Progressives Communist ‘Animals’ Who Will ‘Close Your Churches’ and ‘Kill Your People’ The president complained about primary victories of progressives backed by New York City’s democratic socialist mayor, who this week secured a rent freeze for a million units and put $15 million toward gender-affirming care.
President Donald Trump is seen on stage at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s conference at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC on June 26, 2026. (Photo by Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)
After a series of electoral victories for democratic socialists and legal blows to President Donald Trump’s authoritarian agenda this week, the Republican on Friday ranted to a Christian conference that progressives—whom he called “hardcore, godless communists”—are “the most serious threat to our country since its existence, in my opinion, 250 years ago.”
Trump previewed his nearly 50-minute speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s policy conference with a lengthy post on his Truth Social platform in which he wrote: “I’d be the Greatest Communist in History. I’d give free rent, free houses, free food, everything is free. Unfortunately, after two or three years, the Country where this is taking place would fail. It always does, and then you’ll start living in squalor. There will be no food, there will be no housing, there will be no Military, there will be no nothing.”
In a signal that he was specifically targeting the left flank of the Democratic Party, Trump said: “They’re animals! In many cases, not smart but, in some cases, they are. It’s easy for them to get followers because they make promises that they know they can’t keep, and the Dumocrats aren’t fighting back. In many ways, they’re allowing them to go their own way. They’re afraid they will lose their Election, they’re afraid of conflict. They’re not smart enough or tough enough to fight this plague.”
“These are not social Dumocrats, these are hardcore, godless Communists,” the president continued. “Isn’t it ironic, we’re celebrating a very important Birthday, and instead of speaking about Christ, Freedom, and Victories of all different kinds, we’re speaking about yet another threat to the Foundations of America. These ruthless Communists will attack all Religions but, in particular, Christianity—They always do. All Communist Countries attack Religions violently.”
“As you know, we recently struckNigeria, and largely ended the slaughter of their Great Christian population,” he added. “They know that if they go further, the attack will be far greater and, in that, they don’t want to get involved. I am saving Christians throughout the World, even though we are not in those various Countries, by hitting these Terrorists violently and hard. They will close your Churches, they will kill your people. This is what they’re about.”
During the actual speech, Trump specifically took aim at “the communists elected in New York City recently,” who he claimed “want to completely destroy the traditional American way of life,” an apparent jab at a slate of candidates who won their Democratic primaries earlier this week: Claire Valdez in New York’s 7th Congressional District, Brad Lander in the 10th District, and Darializa Avila Chevalier in the 13th District.
By contrast, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a democratic socialist who ran for president in 2016 and 2020, called the trio’s victories proof that Americans “are sick and tired of status quo politics” and “want to end the corrupt campaign finance system, which enables billionaires to spend huge amounts of money to elect candidates who will represent their interests and go to war against working-class people.”
All three campaigned on progressive policies including more affordable housing, Medicare for All, stronger union protections, and an end to US military support for Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians—and they were backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who continued delivering on his campaign promises on Thursday, when the NYC Rent Guidelines Board approved a two-year rent freeze affecting roughly a million apartments.
While Trump complained about that NYC development in his Friday speech, others have celebrated it. Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, which advocates for universal single-payerhealthcare, said that “the real threat Zohran Mamdani poses is to the career politicians who’ve spent decades making promises, then making excuses, then telling people to vote harder next time. He’s showing people that elected officials can actually do things that help them in their everyday lives.”
Shortly before Trump’s swipe at the New York progressives running for Congress, he claimed that left-leaning Democrats “want to resume the transgender ‘mutilization’ of our children.” In addition to attacking lifesaving gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth, the president has restrictedabortion access and signed legislation that’s already led to millions losing insurance coverage.
Meanwhile, Mamdani on Friday announced a $15 million plan to expand access to gender-affirming care for youth and adults across the city, which includes a direct care access fund, a call and text line, and funding for research. He said that “as the federal government attacks transgender people and attempts to intimidate patients, families, and providers, New York City is stepping up.”
Despite Trump’s claim that the Democratic Party establishment isn’t fighting back against ascendant progressives and democratic socialists, Axios reporting from Thursday suggests centrist Democrats are, in fact, gearing up to do so—and over a dozen have endorsed the “Promise to America” manifesto, emphasizing their support for capitalism, “fiscal discipline,” and law enforcement.
Ripping the manifesto, D’Arrigo said: “'Centrism’ is just performative compromise devoid of critical thinking, policy, or ideology. It’s a political vehicle that gives permission to do nothing in service of protecting a status quo that benefits large corporate donors and special interest groups who fund both parties.”
In addition to serving the corporate interests that bankrolled his return to power, Trump has also served himself during his second term, growing the wealth of his family by billions of dollars and even accepting a luxury plane from Qatar.
Trump has also made a range of other moves that demonstrate his contempt for US law—from pardoning donors and other supporters, including insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol, to weaponizing the Department of Justice against his enemies, to carrying out multiple illegal military actions, such as his invasion of Venezuela and abduction of its president, the ongoing war on Iran, and deadly bombings of boats his administration claims were trafficking drugs.
The president’s violent and authoritarian agenda has faced some setbacks in court this week: Federal judges ruled against the administration’s policy pushing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests at courthouses, as well as a pair of Trump executive orders that attackedvoting rights.
However, those cases are ongoing, plus another federal judge issued lengthy prison sentences for a group of activists who protested outside an ICE detention center and were falsely accused by the administration of being members of a nonexistent “North Texas Antifa Cell.” Trump has also continued his assault on voting rights this week, scrapping plans to sign a bipartisan housing bill in a bid to pressure Congress to pass the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.
With the November elections just over four months away, Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch, also took Trump’s Friday Truth Social comments as a threat, saying, “This sounds a lot to me like Trump laying the groundwork to steal the midterms.”
Corporate Democrats Mobilize to Counter Rise of Democratic Socialists Within the Party
“The progressive movement is winning across the country, from the heart of New York to Michigan to Maine,” said US Rep. Ro Khanna in response to centrist critics.
On election morning, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani joins former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander on June 23, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
The corporate wing of the Democratic Party is looking to fight back after three insurgent progressive candidates knocked off establishment favorites in primary elections in New York this week.
Axios reported on Thursday that centrist Democrats are gearing up to organize against progressives and democratic socialists, who have been racking up victories over the last two years by presenting themselves as an alternative to a failed status quo that lost the 2024 election to President Donald Trump.
One anonymous centrist Democrat predicted to Axios that “there’s going to be a war” between factions in the party, referring to democratic socialists as “bomb-throwers, not problem solvers.”
“Clearly there has to be organization,” another centrist Democrat explained to Axios of their faction’s plans. “You can’t just wring your hands on this stuff.”
To push back against recent victories by democratic socialists, 15 centrist Democrats on Thursday announced their support for the “Promise to America” manifesto in which they emphasize their support for capitalism, law enforcement, and “fiscal discipline.”
In an interview with The Washington Post, Jessica Killin, a Democratic candidate running for US Congress in Colorado who signed the manifesto, said that moderate Democrats need “to be organized and clear in our vision,” arguing that democratic socialists “should not be the face of our party.”
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), another signatory of the manifesto, told the Post that he gave the democratic socialists credit for their organizing, while warning that “that kind of campaign and that type of ideology is not going to play with the people in our districts.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), however, pushed back on the centrists’ efforts to marginalize progressive insurgents.
On the floor of the US House on Friday, Khanna made the case for the growing number of progressives within the ranks of elected Democratic Party officials by saying that voters across the country have shown their hunger for this brand of politics.
“The progressive movement is winning across the country, from the heart of New York to Michigan to Maine,” Khanna said. “The people are saying no to foreign wars and they’re saying no to genocide in Gaza. They’re saying no to the unfair and lopsided economy that has allowed a few people to hoard extreme wealth and power, and they’re saying yes to Medicare for All.”
Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the New York Health Campaign, accused the centrist Democrats of offering a substance-free platform that would not improve Americans’ lives.
“'Centrism’ is just performative compromise devoid of critical thinking, policy, or ideology,” D’Arrigo wrote. “It’s a political vehicle that gives permission to do nothing in service of protecting a status quo that benefits large corporate donors and special interest groups who fund both parties.”
In an interview with The Independent, Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, argued that centrists’ fears are misplaced if they believe that the democratic socialists would act as obstructionists and saboteurs as the Tea Party once did.
“I don’t want to replicate the Freedom Caucus on our side,” Balint insisted, “because it has made this place completely and totally dysfunctional, and we are not delivering for Americans.”
The GOP and the Corporate Dems Can’t Red-Bait Their Way Out of a Reckoning
Tuesday’s New York primary results are the latest sign that Americans are sick to death of a rigged economy and of billionaires buying their elections.
Congressional candidate Claire Valdez speaks during her primary-night watch party at 99 Scott Studio on June 23, 2026 in the East Williamsburg neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Former city comptroller Brad Lander beat Rep. Dan Goldman by more than 30 points. A 32-year-old democratic socialist named Darializa Avila Chevalier knocked off five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and state Assemblymember Claire Valdez won the seat Nydia Velázquez is vacating. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (a recipient of dark money and AIPAC money) campaigned hard against all three and watched all three win anyway.
As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) put it afterward, the message is pretty clear: Americans are sick to death of a rigged economy and of billionaires buying their elections.
The corporate press and just about every Republican in the country will tell you these candidates are “socialists,” and they’ll spit the word the way you’d say “arsonist.” A little history clears the fog.
This is what oligarchy looks like, and the people feeling it in their bank accounts, student loans, and their doctors’ offices understand it far better than the idiotic (or bought-off) Democratic National Committee consultants who keep telling Democrats to move to the “center.”
Strip away the scare word and what’s left is far more truly and anciently American than frightening: a country where a person who works 40 hours a week, no matter how complicated or how humble that work might be, can afford a home and a car, take the family on a vacation every year, put the kids through school and college, see a doctor without going bankrupt, and retire with dignity.
That’s the entire “radical” program that Republicans, corporate Democrats, and our billionaire oligarchs are so flipped out about.
Americans have wanted those things for a very long time. More than 120 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt stood up and called it the Square Deal: a fair shot for the worker, the consumer, and the “honest businessman” against the trusts and the railroad barons who’d swallowed the economy whole.
Franklin Roosevelt built the scaffolding of it with the New Deal, Lyndon Johnson finished the second story with the Great Society, and for about three decades we actually had it. The middle class in the postwar years grew faster and richer than any middle class in the history of the world. By 1980, it was two-thirds of us with a single paycheck (it’s about 41% now, and takes two paychecks to get there).
I grew up inside that promise. My father came home from the antifa war (aka WWII); got a job in a unionized tool-and-die shop in Michigan; and on that one paycheck he and my mother raised four boys, bought a house, kept a car in the driveway (new every three years), had a pension when he retired that let him travel the world, and never once feared that a hospital bill would take the whole thing down.
Nobody we knew was rich, but almost everybody we knew was secure. That security was the whole point, and it didn’t happen by accident. It happened because the country decided, through its government, to make it happen.
And then it was taken apart on purpose. As I lay out in The Hidden History of American the American Dream, the dismantling of that middle class wasn’t an unfortunate side effect of globalization or robots or some impersonal economic weather. It was a deliberate Republican neoliberal project that began with Ronald Reagan imitating Maggie Thatcher and following Heritage’s A Mandate for Leadership in 1981 and has been carried forward by both parties ever since.
The tools were straightforward. Going back to Taft-Hartley in 1947 and the spread of “right-to-work-for-less” laws, Republicans and their corporate funders handed states and giant companies the power to strangle unions, and a worker without a union is a worker without leverage.
They froze the federal minimum wage at $7.25 an hour, where it has sat untouched since 2009. America’s oligarchs fought, decade after decade, to keep the United States the only wealthy nation on Earth without national healthcare, herding us instead into the arms of insurance conglomerates and hospital and physician monopolies, more and more of them now owned by private equity firms that treat a sick patient as a line item to be squeezed.
The result, as the nonpartisan RAND Corporation recently calculated, is that roughly $79 trillion has been pumped upward from the bottom 90% of Americans into the money bins of the morbidly rich top 1% since Reagan, and the middle class has sunk below 50% of us and is hanging on—now requiring two paychecks—by its fingernails.
In that same span the share of national income going to the bottom 90% fell from about two-thirds to less than half, we’ve watched the largest upward transfer of wealth in the history of the American republic all the way back to George Washington, and every dollar of it was a choice some oligarch or his wholly-owned politician made.
The one fully socialized, fully government-run healthcare system we do have in this country, the Veterans Administration, works so well (it has the highest happiness-approval rating of any other healthcare system in America) precisely because it isn’t run for profit, which is exactly why the Republicans are now busy gutting it.
And during the George W. Bush years they took a run at Medicare itself, creating the Medicare Advantage scam through the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act and handing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to private insurers to “manage” the care of our parents and grandparents.
We can see now how that’s going. A federal watchdog reported this month that the biggest for-profit insurers are denying pre-approval for post-hospital care at rates between 51-80%, with more than a third of those denials reversed the moment somebody appeals, which tells you the care should have been approved in the first place.
A Senate investigation found those same insurers overcharged taxpayers by $83 billion in a single year while denying sick seniors the rehabilitation they were promised. But the health insurance industry oligarchs made out like bandits; several are now billionaires or worth hundreds of millions.
This is what oligarchy looks like, and the people feeling it in their bank accounts, student loans, and their doctors’ offices understand it far better than the idiotic (or bought-off) Democratic National Committee consultants who keep telling Democrats to move to the “center.”
Forty-five years of this has produced a country where, thanks to the Supreme Court’s corrupt Citizens United decision, with on-the-take Justice Clarence Thomas the deciding vote, billionaires can legally own politicians outright. And that’s exactly what they’re doing: Just look at the billions that flowed to President Donald Trump and the GOP in 2024 and ask yourself who that government really works for.
Oligarchy, as history teaches and as I write about at length in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, is never a stable form of government. It’s a transitional stage because sooner or later ordinary people figure out they’ve been stripped of any real say, and they rebel.
When that moment comes—and, frankly, it’s here now in America—the oligarchs and the politicians they own face exactly two choices:They can pull back and let the people back in, the way America’s elites grudgingly did in the face of the Republican Great Depression when they swallowed the New Deal in the 1930s. Or they can stomp the middle class rebellion flat with an iron fist via police, the courts, and lawsuits against the media and those who speak out, the way Vladimir Putin did in Russia in the early 2000s.
Donald Trump and the lickspittles who work for him have very plainly chosen the iron fist.
The blueprint for all of it, Project 2025, is the latest plan to drag America back to the dog-eat-dog, mostly poor and powerless country we were before Franklin D. Roosevelt, when the middle class was a sliver rather than a majority and the rich owned everything and made most of the decisions.
What the overpaid corporate Democratic Party consultants miss, and what Trump’s own pollsters figured out years ago, is the shape of the actual American electorate.
Political scientists who map voters find that the single largest bloc of white voters is neither “conservative” nor “liberal,” but both. As Trump’s former PR guy Anthony Scaramucci told us all a few months ago: Trump told me something once that I haven’t forgotten. He said, “You Wall Street guys are imbeciles. You’re socially liberal and fiscally conservative. You know what MY base is? Socially conservative and fiscally liberal.”
A meaningful share of white voters (probably a bit over half, looking at Trump’s two successful elections) carry real prejudice—hate—against either non-whites, queer people, or both, which is precisely why Republicans run almost entirely on trans panic and on demonizing Black “welfare queens” and brown immigrants, because those are about the only issues left on which they’re aligned with that bloc.
On the economics, though, as Scaramucci and Trump noted, that same white voting bloc wants the FDR-Truman-Eisenhower-JFK-LBJ-Nixon-Ford-Carter-era middle class back, the secure one we had before Reagan started tearing it all down in 1981.
That’s why Republicans have to scream “socialism” at any candidate whose actual platform is “rent you can afford” and “a doctor you can see when you need to without going broke.” They can’t argue the economics (and their billionaire donors won’t let them even if they wanted to), so they change the subject to fear.
But the American people aren’t buying the GOP’s oligarchic bullshit anymore. The GOP got crushed in last year’s off-year elections on the simple issue of affordability—which I read as blowback against oligarchy—and Tuesday in New York the floor under corporate Dems who’re still singing the Reaganomics song gave way again.
And it isn’t only New York. Progressives took a House primary in Pennsylvania last month, swept races across Los Angeles and the District of Columbia, and on Tuesday night knocked off four incumbent state legislators in New York alone, while Bernie Sanders kept drawing the biggest crowds of his life on what he calls his Fighting Oligarchy Tour.
So we’re watching two parties move in opposite directions at once.
What these voters keep saying they want is fighters against neoliberalism, fascism, and a return to the New Deal and Great Society.
The Democratic base is trying hard to pull its party back toward its FDR and LBJ roots, away from the Clinton-era deals with Wall Street and the Davos set, away from Barack Obama’s bargain with the insurance giants, away from the bipartisan habit of bankrolling distant wars, including the weapons still flowing to Israel’s assault on Gaza, because people here can’t make rent, go to college, or see a specialist without a three-month wait and a homelessness-threatening bill.
Opposition to that war inside the Democratic coalition has gone lopsided, and the base has noticed that its leaders—mired in big money—missed the moral question entirely. What these voters keep saying they want is fighters against neoliberalism, fascism, and a return to the New Deal and Great Society.
The Republican Party, meanwhile, is bowing and scraping lower and lower to Trump, Project 2025, and their neofascist agenda.
Just look at the last two days: On Tuesday the Senate found the spine to pass a war powers resolution reining him in on Iran, and by Wednesday night, after Trump reportedly screamed at Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in a closed-door lunch, the Senate turned right around and reversed itself when Cassidy lost his spine and flipped his vote and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) ducked into a cowardly “present.”
November will tell us which direction the majority of Americans actually want to go, assuming Trump’s many efforts to rig the outcome don’t all succeed (and I’ll get into those efforts in detail in a future piece).
For now, though, we all should understand what these primaries and the wins that are shocking the Schumer-Jeffries crowd actually represent.
After 45 years in the wilderness, Americans are reaching back for the Square Deal that Teddy Roosevelt promised and the New Deal and Great Society that FDR and LBJ delivered, and no amount of red-baiting about Havana is going to talk them out of it.
We’ve been here before, and now at the end of the third of these 80-year cycles, Democrats must choose to kick the oligarchs out and let the people back in. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again, this time with Zoomers leading the way.
If any of this matters to you, don’t just nod and scroll. Call your senators and representative through the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell them where you stand on healthcare, on the minimum wage and free college, and on the right to protest.
Make sure you and everyone you know is registered and ready to vote in 2026 at vote.org, and find out who’s on your state and local ballot at openstates.org, because the people rigging the game are counting on you staying home.
And if this piece helped you see the pattern a little more clearly, share it, forward it, post it, and consider subscribing at hartmannreport.com so we can keep doing this work together.
Democracy, as Bernie used to say every Friday for 11 years on my radio program, isn’t a spectator sport, and the next three years are, I believe (if we all work hard enough), going to prove it.
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Thom Hartmann Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream" (2020); "The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America" (2019); and more than 25 other books in print. Full Bio >
Ron Paul is a former Republican congressman from Texas. He was the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president.
